Various industries desire light-weight high strength parts to reduce energy consumption in moving devices by reducing their weights. High strength metals are good candidates for such parts. However, such metals which are typically used in sheet form, have low formability. Therefore, conventional forming methods cannot be used for forming these high strength metals.
Recent studies show that high-speed forming methods can cause an increase in the strain rate of the metal sheets and therefore can increase their formability. High-speed forming methods include, for example, explosive forming, electromagnetic forming and electrohydraulic forming. However, each of the methods have drawbacks. For example, the explosive forming method cannot be automated. The electromagnetic forming requires the metal sheet to have high conductivity and as such the electromagnetic method cannot be applied to non-conductive material.
Therefore, a need exists for a system and method for high-speed forming of metal and non-metal sheets without having to endure the drawbacks of the conventional methods.